Taking More Than Mitts to Australia for Opener

The Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Dodgers are scheduled for two regular-season games at the Sydney Cricket Ground.Credit
Mark Nolan/Getty Images

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — Grant Balfour’s father, David, played rugby for the Balmain Tigers in Australia. Grant would play rugby, too, but he changed the course of his life with one simple question: “What are you guys doing?”

Some other children told Balfour they were playing T-ball, and they invited him to bring a glove and join them the next week.

“Next thing you know, my dad’s starting up a baseball club, and it’s my life and I’m living it,” Balfour said.

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M.L.B. enlisted help from Murray Cook, division president of Brickman Sports Turf, to transform the field of the Sydney Cricket Ground.Credit
Ben Platt/mlb.com

Now, as the closer for the Tampa Bay Rays, Balfour is entering his 11th season in the major leagues. He is one of 28 players born in Australia to reach the majors, a figure baseball hopes will grow, in time, after its season-opening series in Sydney on Saturday.

The Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Dodgers are scheduled for two regular-season games at the Sydney Cricket Ground: the first at 4 a.m. Eastern in the United States and the second at 10 p.m. That translates to a 7 p.m. night game and then a 1 p.m. day game in Australia.

“You don’t want to come all this way to play a game that’s not in prime time for the audience here,” Paul Archey, Major League Baseball’s senior vice president for international operations, said by phone the other day. “I don’t know this for a fact, but I imagine this has got to be the first split doubleheader in opening-day history.”

Baseball has staged opening day in Japan four times, and in Mexico and Puerto Rico. But this is the first in a baseball market Archey described as developing.

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The Sydney Cricket Ground has a seating capacity of about 38,000 and has recently undergone $170 million in renovations.Credit
Murray Cook/MLB

“We’d love to play in Europe, and you’ll see that sometime in the near future,” Archey said. “Korea and Taiwan have expressed interest, too, and certainly Latin America. We plan to continue to be aggressive internationally and hit new markets.”

An issue with such markets, of course, is where to play. In Australia, the Sydney Cricket Ground had the seating capacity (some 38,000) and had recently undergone $170 million in renovations. It also has history, dating to the mid-1800s, with sections named for famous cricket players.

What it had never done in the modern era was host baseball, so M.L.B. enlisted help from Murray Cook, division president of Brickman Sports Turf. Cook and his staff used 3,000 to 4,000 tons of material to transform the field, using clay from California for the mound and the infield and creating a warning track, bullpens and an outfield wall — all without anchoring anything in the ground.

“Under the soil we have irrigation lines, drainage lines and soils you don’t want to contaminate,” Cook said in a telephone interview. “So we built all of the outfield fencing sitting on the ground, and behind it is a scaffolding system supported by one-ton blocks of concrete stationed every 10 to 12 feet around the entire fence.”

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Cook and his staff used 3,000 to 4,000 tons of material to transform the field, using clay from California for the mound and the infield and creating a warning track, bullpens and an outfield wall – all without anchoring anything in the ground.Credit
Murray Cook/Mlb

The field, as an oval shape, has substantial foul territory, comparable to the Oakland Coliseum. But Cook said players could not say for sure if it would favor pitchers or hitters. In their first day of batting practice, he said, the Dodgers predicted that scoring could reach double digits each game. The next day, he said, well-hit balls would die in the outfield.

“The wind swirls, too, so it may be a little like Candlestick,” Cook said, referring to the notorious former home of the San Francisco Giants. “It’s late summer, early fall here, so the change of seasons creates some humidity and moisture on the grass. It’s a great time of year to be here, but to say it’s going to be consistent with the weather, that’s tough.”

Aesthetically, comparisons have varied. Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly told The Los Angeles Times that the architectural flourishes reminded him of Churchill Downs. Justin Turner, a Dodgers infielder and former Met, said on Twitter that the facility reminded him of four ballparks: the Oakland Coliseum, R.F.K. Stadium in Washington, the Texas Rangers’ current home in Arlington and the Marlins’ former stadium in Miami.

The configuration will not last long — rugby will be played there April 5 — but the hope for M.L.B. is that the effects will. Archey said he hoped the games would energize the fan base and baseball’s business partners, and inspire youth development.

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Grant Balfour, the closer for the Tampa Bay Rays, is one of 28 players born in Australia to reach the majors.Credit
Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

M.L.B. has been the majority owner of the Australian Baseball League since it started in November 2010, and since then, it said, the number of Australians playing in Class AA, Class AAA and the majors has more than doubled, with 45 new players.

Merchandise sales have grown by more than 400 percent, the league said, and more than 1,245 hours of live major league games were available in Australia last year, an 85 percent increase from 2007. Balfour said greater coverage in the news media, and continued growth of the national league, would be essential.

“You’d like to see the league turn into something that’s on TV and guys are being paid a decent wage to play it on a professional basis,” Balfour said. “If you could play it like in Japan, which is probably second to here as far as salaries and how big it is, that would be great. You want it to be one of those things where you grow up and it’s in your blood. If it’s out there and people see it, hopefully that’s what they need. They need it thrown at them every day, like cricket is, on the back page and the front page of the newspaper.”

For the moment, it has taken over one of the most hallowed sporting venues in Australia, and perhaps the next Balfour will be watching.

“Hopefully, people catch on and realize it’s a great game,” Balfour said. “I know not all of them will maybe understand what’s going on. But at least they’ll be sitting next to someone who knows and they can talk to them about it, get a little more knowledge.

“I started in the game and didn’t know what was going on, and it’s become my life. Hopefully it can affect some young kid the same way.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 22, 2014, on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Taking More Than Mitts to Australia for Opening Day. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe